While still a student at Columbia, Rivers was selected to participate in the inaugural "24 Hour Plays: Old Vic New Voices" event at the Atlantic Theatre.
[16] Rivers received New York Stage & Film's 2015 Founder's Award and, in 2016, he was the Playwright-in-Residence at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Rivers' play the bandaged place won the 2018 Relentless Award,[1] a prize created in honor of the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and was part of New York Stage & Film's 2019 Powerhouse season at Vassar College.
[35] In May and June 2019, Rivers' play To Let Go & Fall received its world premiere production at Theater Latté Da.
The libretto for the first part of the show is by Ellen Fitzhugh and music & additional lyrics were written by Ted Shen.
The show received its world premiere in the fall of 2019 at The Duke on 42nd Street in New York City in a co-production of Transport Group and the Public Theater.
[37] The production appeared on Times Square Chronicles'[38] and The Broadway Blog's "Best of 2019" lists, was named one of NewNowNext's "5 New Musicals in NYC to Be Thankful For",[39] and was designated by AMNY as an "Off-Broadway show worth seeing".
[44] In May 2020, Theater Latté Da announced that Rivers would work on two projects as part of its Next Up laboratory series being held in lieu of a 2020-21 season.
Rivers and composer Ted Shen were commissioned to write a third part to their musical Broadbend, Arkansas, and Rivers was commissioned to work on "a new piece about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 alongside the 1927 premiere of the Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein and Edna Ferber's musical, Showboat".